Author Spotlight no.166 – Kaylin McFarren

Kaylin McFarren is a rare bird indeed. Not a migratory sort, she prefers to hug the West Coast and keep family within visiting range. Although she has virtually been around the world, she was born in California, relocated with her family to Washington, and nested with her husband in Oregon. In addition to playing an active role in his business endeavors, she has been involved in all aspects of their three daughters’ lives – taxi duties, cheerleading coaching, script rehearsals, and relationship counseling, to name but a few. Now she enjoys spending undisciplined time with her two young grandsons and hopes to have many more.

Although Kaylin wasn’t born with a pen in hand like so many of her talented fellow authors, she has been actively involved in both business and personal writing projects for many years. As the director of a fine art gallery, she assisted in furthering the careers of numerous visual artists who under her guidance gained recognition through promotional opportunities and in national publications. Eager to spread her own creative wings, she has since steered her energy toward writing novels. As a result, she has earned more than a dozen literary awards and was a 2008 finalist in the prestigious RWA® Golden Heart contest.

Kaylin is a member of RWA, Rose City Romance Writers, and Willamette Writers. She received her AA in Literature at Highline Community College, which originally sparked her passion for writing. In her free time, she also enjoys giving back to the community through participation and support of various charitable and educational organizations in the Pacific Northwest.

And now from the author herself:

I’ve been asked on numerous occasions about the inspiration behind my latest romantic suspense novel – Severed Threads. I suppose this comes from my interest in scuba diving and Asian antiques, which I’ve collected and sold for more than fifteen years.

During my stint as an art gallery director, I traveled to China once a year to purchase container loads of furnishings. Some of these included dragon-clawed chairs, messenger boxes, gilded birdcages and red lacquered alter tables covered with ornately painted gold serpents, which originally belonged to wealthy, noble families throughout the countryside and various regions. After a visit to the bustling Shanghai harbor, I also became fascinated with junks and modern-day shipping operations. Diving, vessels, relics, noble families, dragons…they circled around in my brain, and soon I found myself writing a story about the recovery of a Chinese concubine’s cursed treasure from a sunken ship, which aids in healing a woman’s damaged soul.

Severed Threads involved four months of research ranging from scuba diving equipment and ancient trade routes to the natural disasters that befell Spanish galleons during the 15th-17th centuries. I wanted to develop fast-paced action scenes like the one when a great white shark attacks Rachel and the villain who is after the Heart of the Dragon – a priceless treasure, believed to be hidden onboard an ancient shipwreck. Hours of orchestrating carefully choreographed interactions resulted in convincing, visual fight sequences. But ultimately, when the last words are typed, not only are the stories in my Threads series focused on historical facts, informative data and thrilling adventures, they are designed to reach into your heart and leave an indelible impression – an encouraging message – reminding readers that they can overcome any obstacle in their lives if they just have faith in the possibility.

And more about Severed Threads:

Believing herself responsible for her father’s fatal diving accident, Rachel Lyons has withdrawn from the world and assumed a safe position at a foundation office. When called upon by a museum director to assist her former love interest with the recovery of a cursed relic from a sunken Chinese merchant ship, she has no intention of cooperating – until her brother is kidnapped by a drug-dealing gangster. In order to save him and gain control over her life, Rachel must not only overcome her greatest fears, but also relive the circumstances that lead to her father’s death.

If you are reading this and you write, in whatever genre, and are thinking “ooh, I’d like to do this” then you can… just email me and I’ll send you the information. They do now (January 2013) carry a fee (£10 / €12.50 / $15) for the new interviews on this blog but everything else (see Opportunities on this blog) is free

Alternatively, if you’d like a free Q&A-only interview, I now have http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com on which I’ve rerun the original interviews posted here then posted new interviews which I then reblog here. These interviews are Q&A only, so I don’t add in my comments but they do get exposure on both sites.

If you go for the interview, it’s very simple; I send you a questionnaire (I have them for novelists, short story authors, children’s authors, non-fiction authors, and poets). You complete the questions, and I let you know when it’s going to go live. Before it does so, I add in comments as if we’re chatting, and then they get posted. When that’s done, I email you with the link so you can share it with your corner of the literary world. And if you have a writing-related blog / podcast and would like to interview me… let me know.

** NEW!! You can now subscribe to this blog on your Kindle / Kindle app!